


call and response

by youcouldmakealife



Series: between the teeth [13]
Category: Original Work
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-18
Updated: 2014-05-18
Packaged: 2018-01-25 15:28:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,275
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1653515
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/youcouldmakealife/pseuds/youcouldmakealife
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Instead, when David picks up, Jake says, “how do you feel about picnics?”</p><p>“I don’t know,” David says honestly.</p><p>“How do you--” Jake starts, then pauses for a moment. “How do you feel about going on a picnic with me?”</p>
            </blockquote>





	call and response

Spring settles in New York, the snow melted for good, jackets retired to the backs of closets, and David gets tense with the reminder that the season’s almost over. He gets an email from Dave, a typical curt one that just serves to arrange a time when David will be free to talk. David sends a time an hour before practice--enough time to discuss anything important, a small enough window that David can beg off if Dave gets off-topic, as he does sometimes, asking after David’s life like five years of being his agent gives him the right to pry. 

Dave calls punctual to the minute, and gets through some compliments about David’s play, notes for improvement that David can’t find fault in, before he gets down to business. 

“I don’t know what your plans for the summer are,” Dave says, “but the camp in Toronto’s meeting again. Hell of a wait list already, but they give preference to repeat visitors. You want me to book you a spot?”

David already knew that it was returning, Jake had sent a text the night before with _you doing toronto this summer? :)_ , and David figured that must have been what he meant, replied with _I don’t know_ , because it was true. 

When it comes down to it, the camp wasn’t the best, too abstracted to properly cater to everyone’s distinct needs, and David’s finally got a trainer outside the team whose style he likes, who’s based in New York and will be around all summer. He knows what David needs, and the best thing for his growth, for his career, would be to stick around, especially since Kurmazov is spending at least half the summer in the city since his wife’s too pregnant to travel. He offered to spend some time working with David, and David wants that, but then, Toronto isn’t until July, and David’s got another empty post-season, months ahead stretching out to snapping before October. 

Even so, he should be staying in New York.

“Sign me up,” he says, and doesn’t think about the reasons why.

*

The season’s winding down with a whimper. Since they’re sitting out of contention, there isn’t much to vie for, and management starts arranging for a family night for the final game. At first it’s wives and kids, the usual crowd, but then parents and siblings start getting pulled in, the whole thing growing to the point where Eisler’s sister’s coming in with her husband from Germany, and Kurmazov’s parents are coming in from Moscow to stay for a month, his wife eight months pregnant and having trouble chasing two kids under six around.

Kurmazov asks him if he’s got anyone coming, and looks sternly at him when he shrugs. “You have to ask,” he says pointedly, like he knows David hasn’t said a word, and David feels cowed enough by his expression that he calls his mom when he gets back from practice.

She picks up on the second ring, which is a promising enough sign, and David manages to stumble his way through explaining the event. 

“It’s not very much notice,” she says. “I can’t ask for time off with this little notice, David.”

“It’s in ten days,” David argues. “How is that not much notice?”

She sighs, drawn out.

“Kurmazov’s parents are coming from _Moscow_ ,” David says, well aware his voice is bordering on a whine, embarrassed but unable to contain it. “Benson’s whole family is coming, like ten of them, from California.” Once again he’s the kid at Lake Placid tagging along with a teammate’s family, who look at him with pity when they think he isn’t looking.

“Well, you’ll be coming to Ottawa for the summer,” she says. “I’ll see you soon.”

“I’m staying in New York,” David says. “Spending a month in Toronto. I don’t have time.”

She’s quiet for a minute. “I imagine you’ll come for a visit when you’re in Toronto, at least,” she says, finally.

“I don’t know,” David says, “it’s pretty far,” and feels a moment of mean, sharp vindictiveness when it quiets her again. 

“I can’t make the effort if you don’t,” she says.

“Then don’t,” David says. Thinks of hanging up, but says “bye,” first, because he doesn’t want to give her an excuse to call him childish again.

When Kurmazov gives him an expectant eyebrow the next day, all David can do is snap, “I asked,” and trust Kurmazov to drop it. Thankfully, he does, and doesn’t say any more about it, not about his own family coming in or anything, at least in David’s earshot. It’s mortifying, to be so obviously pitied, but David isn’t anything but grateful.

*

It’s three days before they play Florida when David gets another call, reaches for it on instinct, wondering if it’s his mother, set to come, wondering if he even wants that. It’s Jake again, though, and David picks up, a set of questions replaced with another--if asking someone out requires a phone call, breaking the date surely does as well.

Instead, when David picks up, Jake says, “how do you feel about picnics?”

“I don’t know,” David says honestly.

“How do you--” Jake starts, then pauses for a moment. “How do you feel about going on a picnic with me?”

David thinks about it. “Fine?” he ventures.

“Okay,” Jake says decisively.

“It’s supposed to rain on Sunday,” David tells him.

“Oh,” Jake says, so disappointed David can hear it through the line. David doesn’t like it. 

“It might not,” he says.

“No, that’s fine,” Jake says. “New game plan.”

“Okay,” David says, and waits.

“I’m gonna think of a new game plan,” Jake says, after a moment, and David’s startled into a laugh. “Are you on your way to practice or anything?”

“No,” David says. “I have time.”

*

The Rangers rout the Panthers Friday night, a desperately needed win if they want to grab one of the final playoff spots, and it bothers David. Mostly because the last thing the Islanders want is the city in playoff mode while they sit out of contention. But also because of the way Jake had stood on the ice after the third goal had gone in, hair plastered to his face with sweat, posture defeated, and once David would have found some satisfaction in it, but he doesn’t now. He would take it as a sign of growth, has been told more times than he can count that he’s supposed to enjoy the win, but not enjoy other teams losing, but he knows it’s just Jake. That it’s fundamentally a weakness.

There isn’t much attention paid to the Islanders-Panthers matchup, both teams so far out of contention that the game is fundamentally meaningless, and the mostly empty arena only serves as an exclamation mark to the point. They’ll be covered on local TV, if that, and their coach has as good as said not to try too hard, that a win and an injury is worse than a loss without one at this point, and a win might be worse for their lottery chances anyway. David hates it, hates playing for a team where giving up is expected, and he can see the mutinous look on Kurmazov’s face as well, but everyone else looks like they’ve mostly checked out, looking ahead to when their families are here, when the season’s over, a clean slate to wipe away another disappointing season, the roster spreading out and then shaken up again, because nothing’s working, so what’s the point?

David tries anyway, because it’s his job, because he can’t _not_ , and with Kurmazov and Eisler on the wings, they blow past sleepy Panthers defence, probably given the same awful speech, sling in a goal, and then tap in another, so it’s two-nothing by the end of first, and with everyone playing the way they are, that’s where it sits at the close of the third.

The locker room is loose, proud and joking after the game, as if any of them other than David’s line and their goaltending had shit to do with the score. David bites down the thought, though, pats Knutsen on the shoulder on his way to the showers because he genuinely earned the shutout, even if the opposing offense was pathetic, because his D was as lazy as the Panthers’ was.

When he exits the locker room he’s mostly expecting Jake to be lounging against the far wall, and when he isn’t, pushes down the feeling of disappointment for a moment before he pulls his phone out, refuses to just swallow it. _Being a sore loser?_ he texts, sends it after a moment of pause, because Jake isn’t one, and will probably just find it funny.

 _have to go 2 bed early,_ Jake texts back. _big date 2mrw :)_.

David rolls his eyes and calls him before he can rethink that either.

“What’s up?” Jake asks, enough noise in the background that it’s clear he’s still in the locker room.

“Are you seriously just going back to the hotel?” David asks.

“I don’t know,” Jake says. “Do you have a better offer?”

“Come get a drink?” David asks. “Or food. Or whatever.”

“Are you asking me out?” Jake says, sounding delighted, and the noise around him dies down, because locker rooms are nosy.

“What do you think?” David asks, instead of answering.

“Meet you the usual place?” Jake asks. “Gimme ten.”

It takes him twelve, and a good chunk of the team’s filtered out, eyeing David askance when they see him standing outside the room, so that he’s fidgety, uncomfortable when Jake wanders over, tugs David into a loose hug that’s the norm in these circles, but still gets a raised eyebrow from Eisler on his way out because David doesn’t submit to them except on the ice, goes stiff the second Eisler slings an arm around him, enough that Eisler doesn’t, now.

They end up grabbing dinner, or more of a snack, really, splitting a couple appetizers at a place Jake’s sister told him to check out, still busy even at eleven, but just quiet enough that they manage to get seats. It’s formal enough that it’s a good thing they’re wearing game day suits, and enough that the appetizers are so tiny that David’s still hungry after his fill, but everything’s good, the kind of carefully crafted food he doesn’t usually have the patience for with thousands of calories to barrel through just to keep his weight up. It costs enough to make him wince, and when he reaches for the bill, Jake makes him play rock-paper-scissors through it, threatening to go up front and pay if David sabotages the game by refusing to play. David rolls his eyes demonstrably at him, which doesn’t dim Jake’s grin at all, and Jake wins--or loses--the battle, refuses to play best two out of three, and slides his credit card into the bill while David scowls at him.

“Nobody picks scissors,” David says.

“I do,” Jake says, and nudges David’s foot under the table with his own.

They share a cab back at Jake’s insistence, even though the hotel is enough out of the way that it doesn’t make any sense to. David allows it, but only because Jake agrees to let him pay his portion of the fare, throwing his hands up with an innocent look, like he wasn’t planning on anything otherwise. David knows him well enough to know it’s a total lie.

It’s a startling realisation.

“Wait five minutes, okay?” Jake asks the cabbie when they reach David’s apartment, handing him a twenty on top of the fare David’s paid, and it’ll serve him right if he comes back down to an empty spot, but the cabbie smiles at him, the way everyone does, the way Jake just seems to draw to him, that even David isn’t immune to anymore, if he ever really was.

He follows David to the front doors. “What are you even doing?” David asks.

“Walking you home,” Jake says seriously, and David snorts and lets Jake lope up the stairs behind him, close enough that David can feel him there, just over his shoulder as he unlocks the door.

“I’ll call you tomorrow morning,” Jake says, once David’s inside. “With my awesome game plan.”

“Come in,” David says, a little shy, to Jake’s shoulder and not his face. Wants it, for Jake to come in, to stay, to drape himself all over David and wake up beside him in the morning with bedhead and drowsy eyes, the way he’d looked the night David had fallen asleep beside him. It scares him, but in the way Quebec City did, New York did, the kind that means he’s earned something that he can lose.

“Cabbie’s waiting,” Jake says.

David gives him a flat look.

“I’m going to do this right, okay?” Jake says. “I mean it this time.”

“I don’t even know what that means,” David says, exasperated.

“I mean I’m going to do this right,” Jake repeats. “You deserve that.”

“And doing this right means you can’t come in?” David asks.

“Nope,” Jake says cheerfully, then looks over his shoulder, brief, before leaning down and pressing a kiss to David’s temple, affectionate, like it’s easy. It makes David’s cheeks heat, makes his skin feel lit up where Jake’s lips brushed, and he doesn’t know what doing it right is, but he trusts Jake to.

“See you in the morning,” Jake says, once he’s pulled back, quiet.

“Looking forward to it,” David says, and it’s saying too much, maybe, he thinks he might be saying too much, but he means it.

**Author's Note:**

> And here 'between the teeth' draws to a close. I'm planning on some standalone stuff for these two in the future, but this is the end of the thrust of this particular narrative. Thanks for your patience, everyone, I know this one took a whole lot longer than the others.


End file.
